Chapter four in FIAE discusses three important types of assessment; they are, Portfolio, Rubric and Student Self-Assessment. These three assessments measure multiple things within the classroom. With these three tools we, as teachers, can measure a students content knowledge, their understanding, and whether or not they has mastery in the subject at hand. Portfolios provide visual representation that allows students and teacher’s track learning over a long period of time. Portfolios provide students with the ability to use self-assessment. Students, who are able to look back at previous work and can reflect, can truly excel as learners. Self-assessment allows students to express themselves. It is a great way for students to ask clarifying questions, learn from their mistakes, Track their progression, and see their true potential. Rubrics tie into this quite well as well because they provide guidelines for student, and prevent common mistakes. Rubrics are a great way to give your students a sense of direction, and keep them focused on a final goal. As teachers we need to make sure that our rubrics are clear, fair, content related, and be a reliable guideline for students.
Synthesis:
Everyone found chapter four, useful and important. Collectively we discussed the importance of the assessment tools. Mutually we agreed that these assessment tools are great learning tools for our students. If we mold all three of these assessments together we provide our students with great opportunity to succeed. With portfolios, I found Russell’s explanation summed up our views as a class. He said, “ Instead of focusing on just the scores received on tests and exams, portfolios allow for a visual representation of the growth of the student, and “promote the ideals of differentiated classes” (p.44). “ Ms. Libby summed the use of Rubrics up well; she says, “A rubric must be examined in terms of content, clarity, practicality, and technical qualities/fairness. Teachers must identify exactly what the essential content and skills are and what is acceptable evidence of those skills for the students to show or demonstrate.” Tyler described Self-assessment well saying, “self-assessments were discussed which allows the students to reflect on their own efforts, thus providing the teacher with an idea of where each student feels they are academically.” As a class I feel we all believe that through the use of these three assessments, our students will be able to take control of what they are learning, reflect on their understanding, and most of all have some independence, where they can effectively express themselves. As teachers we feel that we will be able to see where our students understandings lie, what expectations they have met, and where they need more work.
Cheyenne McCarthy
Chapter four of Fair Isn’t Always Equal is about the three important types of assessment. These include portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment. All three of these can measure content knowledge, understanding, and mastery, and all can be very useful. A portfolio is nice because I, as the teacher, can determine how long I would like my students’ portfolios to be and how long I want the process to go on for. Portfolios can be a lasting artifact, for example, we are creating portfolios now for when we have to do portfolio presentations. These portfolios that we are creating now can be used for when we apply for a teaching job. Rubrics can be nice, but personally, I don’t much like them. Sometimes it is nice to have a rubric which can give a nice outline to both students and teachers of what is expected, but we must take into account the abilities of students on an individual scale. Student self-assessment can be beneficial as well, however I find that you have students who can be very good at this, but you also will have students on both extremes of this grading spectrum. By this I mean you will have those students who will grade themselves very harshly, even if it may not be appropriate. You will also have those students who give themselves 100’s on everything they do even if they don’t deserve it. This may be because they truly believe they deserve it, or they are looking for the good grade. All this being said, there must be a time and place for all three of these and I must be prepared for that.
Ashley Godbout
This chapter focuses on three types of assessment: portfolios, rubrics and student assessment. Portfolios allow teachers to collect and examine student work over a short or long period of time. They show student understanding and improvement and provide a clear interpretation of student mastery. They are great for student reflections too because student’s can see their development over time; it gives them something to be proud of especially if they are picking the work going into it. Rubrics are another form of assessing student performance. Teachers should review their rubrics in terms of content, clarity, practicality, technical quality/fairness, and “sampling”. They should include only the important information, be clearly defined and have appropriate examples, be easily interpreted by teachers and students, be reliable and valid, and show the task is appropriate to the content being assessed. Self-assessment is extremely important in any class for many reasons. It paves a foundation for students to see their growth, improvements, and potential. They can also reflect on areas where they could’ve done better or what they could’ve done differently to perform at a higher level. My favorite method of the three is portfolios because I think the teacher and student benefits are tremendous. It’s a great way for students to assess their own improvements and understandings and also for the teacher to see student content mastery over time. Portfolios give students the opportunity to choose pieces of work to include and their reasoning for the choice. The students can use their progress to set goals for future semesters/years which encourages them to take charge of their own learning.
Tyler Michaud
The fourth chapter of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, by Rick Wormeli, focused on three types of assessment: portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. The very first type discussed is the portfolio, which is basically a collection of works created throughout the class. The purpose of this is that it gives both the teacher and student a visual representation of their progress and mastery throughout the course. Secondly, the text explored rubrics which yield the greatest amount of mistakes, using them is a series of trial and error. Finally, self-assessments were discussed which allows the students to reflect on their own efforts, thus providing the teacher with an idea of where each student feels they are academically. Personally, self-assessments have always been my favorite! Having had classes that provided these after every project (especially in art class) it allowed me the opportunity to not only reflect on what was expected, but to defend myself if I felt that I accomplished something that the teacher may miss when assessing. Also, it was not until I took a writing course in college that I had an actual final portfolio, I feel that it helped me grow. For that writing class, I was able to pick the works that I felt best represented my mastery and in the portfolio I included every version of that paper from the first to the final draft. Additionally, I had to write a statement defending my choices and the revision processes. By doing this it truly gave me perspective on my own development and choices. Finally, when I received my portfolio back my professor had provided a response to my reflection that covered my own growth and where I could improve further. To me, it seems that learning is so subjective that most of the time educating is a series of trial and error all in search of the "right" method.
Russell Warren
To ensure that all students are being judged fairly, the types of assessment must be as varied as the types of learners in the classroom. In Chapter four, Wormeli highlights three major and invaluable types of assessment:
Portfolios – Instead of focusing on just the scores received on tests and exams, portfolios allow for a visual representation of the growth of the student, and “promote the ideals of differentiated classes” (p.44). Tests can be misleading: a student could understand the material but made a few mistakes, or they could be good at making choices but have no idea how to apply the material. A collection of various examples of their learning and knowledge allows the teacher to not only view their students’ growth, but learn how they learn.
Rubrics – I loved the detailed and helpful prompts Wormeli provides in regard to rubrics, another type of assessment. Rubrics not only make the correction and assessment of the students easier, but also show how well they can follow rules and understand expectations. However, it’s not as easy as writing a few point values and saying what they need to achieve it. Making a rubric is an intensive process, where a teacher must think about content, clarity, practically, and fairness, identify wants, choose holistic or analytical, decide on wording.
Self-Assessment – This has been a continuing suggestion in the books, and one I never thought of but am completely tied to. The UbD book suggests a notebook, MI suggests a letter system between the teacher and the students, but no matter what, student self-assessment is an incredibly useful tool to assess the students’ knowledge and your effectiveness. Students can express their worries or wants, highlight concerns, laud enjoyable lessons or assignments, ect.
By just including these three types of assessment, multiple intelligences and learning types are addressed and the classroom becomes an open and flexible environment where the students understand their knowledge of the material comes first, not the grade.
Christopher Vogel
Chapter 4 discusses different ways of assigning or managing work in the classroom. The portfolio is an option to use and has the benefit of getting students to look over their work a second (or greater) time. In addition it provides the teacher with a bigger picture of a student’s productivity and learning. The reading impacted me because it described the broad range of possibilities in using portfolios in the classroom. I have only completed two portfolios in my life but both have provided a great representation of how I did in the class. The portfolios also provide a detailed and quick way to look back or reference the information I learned throughout the year. The chapter also details how to set up and use a rubric in the class. I had not realized the detail required in creating a functional and helpful rubric. I know in science the procedure section of my lab report was supposed to be a step by step process for people to accomplish the same exact experiment. I see the rubric along similar lines but to explain to each student in no uncertain terms how to complete the assignment. Similar to portfolio the student self-assessment seems like a great way to get students to look over their work again rather than just turn in and forget. The wide variety of self-assessment makes integrating it into the classroom doable and easy. The basic ones like self-checklist and reading notations are just several ways to get students to look over their work once it is given back to them.
Meghan Hughes
Portfolios are a collective way to keep track of the work and progress of all students. By using portfolios, students are able to reflect on their own work, and are able to comment and reflect on their progress throughout the process. The process of portfolios also allows teachers to differentiate instruction for all students. Allowing students to have some control over their work and their success will help them to become more successful, and for them to make better progress. Students will also be able to be more successful if they clearly understand what is expected of them. Rubrics can help students to understand the expectations of every assignment. Understanding every assignment will help students to understand their progress throughout their process. In order to allow the students to successfully understand rubrics, they will need to be “student friendly.” We as teachers need to ask ourselves how and what we are trying to tell and teach each of the students. Designing a rubric is key to helping students to succeed and make progress in the classroom. It is important to “identify the essential and enduring content and skills you will expect students to demonstrate.” It is also important to identify the “content and skills” students have been able to master through the process. A method to test the success of a rubric is to use existing work to test and formulate a successful rubric. This may take some time and effort, but the end product will be good student work and understanding that will help the student’s progress throughout their learning.
Matt Potter
This chapter focuses on three very important things. They are, Portfolio, Rubric, and Student Self-Assessment. I am choosing to focus on portfolio. Portfolios are a great way for students to track their learning over the course of a year. Portfolios keep students organized to some extent because they hold onto everything, and can refer back to it whenever necessary. I feel a portfolio is the start of the three types of assessment talked about in this chapter. Rubrics, and Student Self-Assessment can easily be followed and achieved when working with a portfolio. Students, who are able to reflect on their own work, and improve from the past, excel as learners. Rubrics are great because they set guidelines for students, but don’t limit them in most cases. They tie well into the other assessment types because they give the students something to refer to, and it provides different scores based on efforts and quality of work. In a perfect word students will strive to over achieve the standards of the rubric.
I plan to utilize all three of these strategies as a teacher. I feel that they all accent each other in useful ways, and leave a plentiful amount of room for learning and improvement. In a math setting I feel this can be a useful tool for my students. As more and more schools are requiring a final assessment, I believe this will be a great way for my students to keep track of, and constantly learn all material. Come time for their midterm or final assessment, my students will have a great studying tool. These three assessment tools will hopefully help my students learn the most, and be most successful in what they do.
Michael Diffin
Chapter four in FIAE relates right from the beginning to MI as it begins with portfolios as types of assessments in determining accurate grades. It is one of the best ways to assess genuine learning as you can see multiple types of learning and what worked best with them. It is also useful as it can show multiple products of their work in replacement of multiple products of work. The portfolios are also useful as they are chosen pieces by the students and they get to show you what they think is their best work and they have the ability to tell you why they think it was the best piece of work that they have done. This chapter spends a great deal of time talking about the use of rubrics and their effectiveness for assessment and the difference in using a holistic or a analytical rubric. I find there is use in both of them but the use of the holistic appears to be more user friendly to the student. If there are types of students that like the analytical as opposed to the holistic than you could get specific on their sheets and give details about what was good or could have been better. Another very important part of assessment is the self assessment factor of the students work. It is always a good idea to see how the students believe they did on the work and combined with the portfolio form of assessment I believe that they would show accurately how the student is doing and thinks they are doing.
Ashley Libby
The three important types of assessment are portfolios, rubrics, and student assessment. Portfolios allow teachers to collect the students work throughout long periods of time. This give the teacher’s a collective amount of student work that is full of grades to look back on and track progress. The portfolio can only include just one years’ worth of student work or I can be a multiple year portfolio of ongoing collective work. There are many types of ways to physically keep the portfolio including an actual folder or just having an electronic version that is easy transferable to multiple electronic devices.Rubrics are great for “assessing and reporting student achievement.” (pg. 44). A rubric must be examined in terms of content, clarity, practicality, and technical qualities/fairness. Teachers must identify exactly what the essential content and skills are and what is acceptable evidence of those skills for the students to show or demonstrate. The teachers must then write what the highest level of performance is and if they want the rubric holistic or analytic. They then must decide what the label will be for each performance level in the rubric. Teachers must then write the description for each level and they have themselves a rubric. Student Self-Assessment makes the student and teachers set goals and ask them to analyze their own responses. This asks students to review their own work and this helps them see their own improvement and progress. These three assessments are great for the teachers and the students because it really makes both parties evaluate the students and themselves. Evaluate what the exact goal is and what is acceptable demonstration and how they have progressed through the year or multiple years.
Tyler Brown
As Wormeli discusses three valuable forms of assessment, I reflect on the things offered in my own high-school education and the similarities and differences between what is put forth in this chapter. It is hard to argue that what is discussed in the chapter is anything but true, however my own experience indicated that there are many ways this can go wrong when being implemented into the classroom.
In the use of portfolios, the major goal is to allow a concrete and visual representation of the growth of the student that will allow them, as well as the teacher, to reflect on their own progress and identify strengths of weaknesses leading up to the final product. This type of assessment also allows for a sense of pride and self-worth to be shared by the student once they are able to see how far they have come.
Incorporating rubrics can be used as a form of assessment that does well to clearly define the goal of the given assignment up front, and allow students to check their own work before handing it in to make sure that it meets the clearly defined expectations. Use of rubrics can also deliver a sense of the student’s ability to follow rules and directions. It helps teachers by defining a clear set of guidelines for them to base their student’s grade upon completion of the assignment. Rubric making requires some critical thinking by the teacher however, and failure to provide clarity, practicality, and fairness may result in mass confusion throughout the course of the assignment. In order to avoid such things, incorporating the student’s opinions about what requirements should be met allows them to take responsibility for their work and put them at the center of their learning.
Self-assessment is the third and final form of assessment outlined in the chapter. This form of assessment is one that I find to be the most useful as a student. In my own experience, teacher’s that encouraged self-assessment provided the most growth for me as a student. When one is able to reflect upon their own work, critique it, and defend the decisions they made throughout completion of the assignment, it allows for a fuller understanding of what they learned, what their objective was, and what they can do in the future to improve. It also allows teachers a better understanding of where the student’s perceive themselves to be in terms of mastering the objectives of the course.
Cole Phillips
Rick Wormeli details, in chapter four of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, three major forms of assessment which are all, at least, a bit atypical and can provide for a truly differentiated experience, catering to the individual strengths of each student. Wormeli’s idea of a portfolio-style assessment is one of visual strength and is a collection of works compiled to make as strong a point as any exam. Wormeli speaks on the benefit of this style of assessment as being a creative approach to an assessment that compensates for students who may fully grasp the material, but carelessly err on tests, or students who may not grasp the material at all, but are spectacularly good at guessing on tests. He goes on to comment on the intensive process of rubric making which, in itself, is a form of assessment. While a rubric can, and may well, be too domineering, when prepared carefully and with attention to the wants and needs of all students, it can help to guide students in the direction they need to be headed in order to best grasp the material. Self-assessment, too, can provide students with a more in-depth look at exactly how they did in terms of grasping the material at hand, what they did well, what they could have done better, and how to better prepare for the future. A student’s reflection on his or her self is a powerful one. Realization, rather than being told what to realize, can be exceptionally powerful.
Devin Boilard
Chapter 4: Three Important Types of Assessment
In Chapter 4 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal author Rick Wormeli breaks the task of assessment up into three vital processes: portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. Portfolios, Wormeli argues, allow for a broad scale reflection of a student’s accomplishments, detailing the full experience of learning that took place. The flexibility in which a portfolio can be created is vast, each facet carrying its own set of variables: medium (paper vs. electronic), time (multi-year vs. unit), size (a full collection of works vs. representative samples), and purpose (graded vs. reflection). The use of any of these variables is at the teacher’s discretion, allowing for one to easily mold portfolios into their curriculum and have it fit their needs. Second, rubrics, allow for task specific assessment. Rubrics can be constructed to meet two needs: holistic, to view as a whole, or analytic, to view for skills and content. The benefits of analytic rubrics is that they allow students to see what elements of an assignment carry the most worth and can therefore better understand what the purpose of the task is. Holistic rubrics are beneficial in that they are far less time consuming while offering similar levels of feed back verses analytic. It should be noted, rubric making is an art, it takes time and skill and end results will always allow room for improvement.
Lastly, self-reflection, as a student I have felt the process of self-reflection on my own work was an arduous task that carried an outcome of little worth. The practicum experience has changed my views on how I think as a student tremendously, this topic included. As I regard grades with less worth I have been forced to find value in some other element of the learning process, the ability to self reflect and grow from experience has been that outlet. I was inspired by this chapter to create my own process for self-reflection that I would like to someday implement in my classroom. The idea steams around a student driven portfolio project that runs the entire length of a school year, the aforementioned variables at full discretion of the students. The exhibits of these works will take place at parent teacher conferences, creating a great opportunity for student, parent, and teacher to assess learning and establish goals.
Table of Contents
Abstract:
Chapter four in FIAE discusses three important types of assessment; they are, Portfolio, Rubric and Student Self-Assessment. These three assessments measure multiple things within the classroom. With these three tools we, as teachers, can measure a students content knowledge, their understanding, and whether or not they has mastery in the subject at hand. Portfolios provide visual representation that allows students and teacher’s track learning over a long period of time. Portfolios provide students with the ability to use self-assessment. Students, who are able to look back at previous work and can reflect, can truly excel as learners. Self-assessment allows students to express themselves. It is a great way for students to ask clarifying questions, learn from their mistakes, Track their progression, and see their true potential. Rubrics tie into this quite well as well because they provide guidelines for student, and prevent common mistakes. Rubrics are a great way to give your students a sense of direction, and keep them focused on a final goal. As teachers we need to make sure that our rubrics are clear, fair, content related, and be a reliable guideline for students.Synthesis:
Everyone found chapter four, useful and important. Collectively we discussed the importance of the assessment tools. Mutually we agreed that these assessment tools are great learning tools for our students. If we mold all three of these assessments together we provide our students with great opportunity to succeed. With portfolios, I found Russell’s explanation summed up our views as a class. He said, “ Instead of focusing on just the scores received on tests and exams, portfolios allow for a visual representation of the growth of the student, and “promote the ideals of differentiated classes” (p.44). “ Ms. Libby summed the use of Rubrics up well; she says, “A rubric must be examined in terms of content, clarity, practicality, and technical qualities/fairness. Teachers must identify exactly what the essential content and skills are and what is acceptable evidence of those skills for the students to show or demonstrate.” Tyler described Self-assessment well saying, “self-assessments were discussed which allows the students to reflect on their own efforts, thus providing the teacher with an idea of where each student feels they are academically.” As a class I feel we all believe that through the use of these three assessments, our students will be able to take control of what they are learning, reflect on their understanding, and most of all have some independence, where they can effectively express themselves. As teachers we feel that we will be able to see where our students understandings lie, what expectations they have met, and where they need more work.Cheyenne McCarthy
Chapter four of Fair Isn’t Always Equal is about the three important types of assessment. These include portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment. All three of these can measure content knowledge, understanding, and mastery, and all can be very useful. A portfolio is nice because I, as the teacher, can determine how long I would like my students’ portfolios to be and how long I want the process to go on for. Portfolios can be a lasting artifact, for example, we are creating portfolios now for when we have to do portfolio presentations. These portfolios that we are creating now can be used for when we apply for a teaching job. Rubrics can be nice, but personally, I don’t much like them. Sometimes it is nice to have a rubric which can give a nice outline to both students and teachers of what is expected, but we must take into account the abilities of students on an individual scale. Student self-assessment can be beneficial as well, however I find that you have students who can be very good at this, but you also will have students on both extremes of this grading spectrum. By this I mean you will have those students who will grade themselves very harshly, even if it may not be appropriate. You will also have those students who give themselves 100’s on everything they do even if they don’t deserve it. This may be because they truly believe they deserve it, or they are looking for the good grade. All this being said, there must be a time and place for all three of these and I must be prepared for that.Ashley Godbout
This chapter focuses on three types of assessment: portfolios, rubrics and student assessment. Portfolios allow teachers to collect and examine student work over a short or long period of time. They show student understanding and improvement and provide a clear interpretation of student mastery. They are great for student reflections too because student’s can see their development over time; it gives them something to be proud of especially if they are picking the work going into it. Rubrics are another form of assessing student performance. Teachers should review their rubrics in terms of content, clarity, practicality, technical quality/fairness, and “sampling”. They should include only the important information, be clearly defined and have appropriate examples, be easily interpreted by teachers and students, be reliable and valid, and show the task is appropriate to the content being assessed. Self-assessment is extremely important in any class for many reasons. It paves a foundation for students to see their growth, improvements, and potential. They can also reflect on areas where they could’ve done better or what they could’ve done differently to perform at a higher level. My favorite method of the three is portfolios because I think the teacher and student benefits are tremendous. It’s a great way for students to assess their own improvements and understandings and also for the teacher to see student content mastery over time. Portfolios give students the opportunity to choose pieces of work to include and their reasoning for the choice. The students can use their progress to set goals for future semesters/years which encourages them to take charge of their own learning.Tyler Michaud
The fourth chapter of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, by Rick Wormeli, focused on three types of assessment: portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. The very first type discussed is the portfolio, which is basically a collection of works created throughout the class. The purpose of this is that it gives both the teacher and student a visual representation of their progress and mastery throughout the course. Secondly, the text explored rubrics which yield the greatest amount of mistakes, using them is a series of trial and error. Finally, self-assessments were discussed which allows the students to reflect on their own efforts, thus providing the teacher with an idea of where each student feels they are academically. Personally, self-assessments have always been my favorite! Having had classes that provided these after every project (especially in art class) it allowed me the opportunity to not only reflect on what was expected, but to defend myself if I felt that I accomplished something that the teacher may miss when assessing. Also, it was not until I took a writing course in college that I had an actual final portfolio, I feel that it helped me grow. For that writing class, I was able to pick the works that I felt best represented my mastery and in the portfolio I included every version of that paper from the first to the final draft. Additionally, I had to write a statement defending my choices and the revision processes. By doing this it truly gave me perspective on my own development and choices. Finally, when I received my portfolio back my professor had provided a response to my reflection that covered my own growth and where I could improve further. To me, it seems that learning is so subjective that most of the time educating is a series of trial and error all in search of the "right" method.Russell Warren
To ensure that all students are being judged fairly, the types of assessment must be as varied as the types of learners in the classroom. In Chapter four, Wormeli highlights three major and invaluable types of assessment:
By just including these three types of assessment, multiple intelligences and learning types are addressed and the classroom becomes an open and flexible environment where the students understand their knowledge of the material comes first, not the grade.
Christopher Vogel
Chapter 4 discusses different ways of assigning or managing work in the classroom. The portfolio is an option to use and has the benefit of getting students to look over their work a second (or greater) time. In addition it provides the teacher with a bigger picture of a student’s productivity and learning. The reading impacted me because it described the broad range of possibilities in using portfolios in the classroom. I have only completed two portfolios in my life but both have provided a great representation of how I did in the class. The portfolios also provide a detailed and quick way to look back or reference the information I learned throughout the year. The chapter also details how to set up and use a rubric in the class. I had not realized the detail required in creating a functional and helpful rubric. I know in science the procedure section of my lab report was supposed to be a step by step process for people to accomplish the same exact experiment. I see the rubric along similar lines but to explain to each student in no uncertain terms how to complete the assignment. Similar to portfolio the student self-assessment seems like a great way to get students to look over their work again rather than just turn in and forget. The wide variety of self-assessment makes integrating it into the classroom doable and easy. The basic ones like self-checklist and reading notations are just several ways to get students to look over their work once it is given back to them.
Meghan Hughes
Portfolios are a collective way to keep track of the work and progress of all students. By using portfolios, students are able to reflect on their own work, and are able to comment and reflect on their progress throughout the process. The process of portfolios also allows teachers to differentiate instruction for all students. Allowing students to have some control over their work and their success will help them to become more successful, and for them to make better progress. Students will also be able to be more successful if they clearly understand what is expected of them. Rubrics can help students to understand the expectations of every assignment. Understanding every assignment will help students to understand their progress throughout their process. In order to allow the students to successfully understand rubrics, they will need to be “student friendly.” We as teachers need to ask ourselves how and what we are trying to tell and teach each of the students. Designing a rubric is key to helping students to succeed and make progress in the classroom. It is important to “identify the essential and enduring content and skills you will expect students to demonstrate.” It is also important to identify the “content and skills” students have been able to master through the process. A method to test the success of a rubric is to use existing work to test and formulate a successful rubric. This may take some time and effort, but the end product will be good student work and understanding that will help the student’s progress throughout their learning.Matt Potter
This chapter focuses on three very important things. They are, Portfolio, Rubric, and Student Self-Assessment. I am choosing to focus on portfolio. Portfolios are a great way for students to track their learning over the course of a year. Portfolios keep students organized to some extent because they hold onto everything, and can refer back to it whenever necessary. I feel a portfolio is the start of the three types of assessment talked about in this chapter. Rubrics, and Student Self-Assessment can easily be followed and achieved when working with a portfolio. Students, who are able to reflect on their own work, and improve from the past, excel as learners. Rubrics are great because they set guidelines for students, but don’t limit them in most cases. They tie well into the other assessment types because they give the students something to refer to, and it provides different scores based on efforts and quality of work. In a perfect word students will strive to over achieve the standards of the rubric.I plan to utilize all three of these strategies as a teacher. I feel that they all accent each other in useful ways, and leave a plentiful amount of room for learning and improvement. In a math setting I feel this can be a useful tool for my students. As more and more schools are requiring a final assessment, I believe this will be a great way for my students to keep track of, and constantly learn all material. Come time for their midterm or final assessment, my students will have a great studying tool. These three assessment tools will hopefully help my students learn the most, and be most successful in what they do.
Michael Diffin
Chapter four in FIAE relates right from the beginning to MI as it begins with portfolios as types of assessments in determining accurate grades. It is one of the best ways to assess genuine learning as you can see multiple types of learning and what worked best with them. It is also useful as it can show multiple products of their work in replacement of multiple products of work. The portfolios are also useful as they are chosen pieces by the students and they get to show you what they think is their best work and they have the ability to tell you why they think it was the best piece of work that they have done. This chapter spends a great deal of time talking about the use of rubrics and their effectiveness for assessment and the difference in using a holistic or a analytical rubric. I find there is use in both of them but the use of the holistic appears to be more user friendly to the student. If there are types of students that like the analytical as opposed to the holistic than you could get specific on their sheets and give details about what was good or could have been better. Another very important part of assessment is the self assessment factor of the students work. It is always a good idea to see how the students believe they did on the work and combined with the portfolio form of assessment I believe that they would show accurately how the student is doing and thinks they are doing.Ashley Libby
The three important types of assessment are portfolios, rubrics, and student assessment. Portfolios allow teachers to collect the students work throughout long periods of time. This give the teacher’s a collective amount of student work that is full of grades to look back on and track progress. The portfolio can only include just one years’ worth of student work or I can be a multiple year portfolio of ongoing collective work. There are many types of ways to physically keep the portfolio including an actual folder or just having an electronic version that is easy transferable to multiple electronic devices.Rubrics are great for “assessing and reporting student achievement.” (pg. 44). A rubric must be examined in terms of content, clarity, practicality, and technical qualities/fairness. Teachers must identify exactly what the essential content and skills are and what is acceptable evidence of those skills for the students to show or demonstrate. The teachers must then write what the highest level of performance is and if they want the rubric holistic or analytic. They then must decide what the label will be for each performance level in the rubric. Teachers must then write the description for each level and they have themselves a rubric. Student Self-Assessment makes the student and teachers set goals and ask them to analyze their own responses. This asks students to review their own work and this helps them see their own improvement and progress. These three assessments are great for the teachers and the students because it really makes both parties evaluate the students and themselves. Evaluate what the exact goal is and what is acceptable demonstration and how they have progressed through the year or multiple years.
Tyler Brown
As Wormeli discusses three valuable forms of assessment, I reflect on the things offered in my own high-school education and the similarities and differences between what is put forth in this chapter. It is hard to argue that what is discussed in the chapter is anything but true, however my own experience indicated that there are many ways this can go wrong when being implemented into the classroom.
In the use of portfolios, the major goal is to allow a concrete and visual representation of the growth of the student that will allow them, as well as the teacher, to reflect on their own progress and identify strengths of weaknesses leading up to the final product. This type of assessment also allows for a sense of pride and self-worth to be shared by the student once they are able to see how far they have come.
Incorporating rubrics can be used as a form of assessment that does well to clearly define the goal of the given assignment up front, and allow students to check their own work before handing it in to make sure that it meets the clearly defined expectations. Use of rubrics can also deliver a sense of the student’s ability to follow rules and directions. It helps teachers by defining a clear set of guidelines for them to base their student’s grade upon completion of the assignment. Rubric making requires some critical thinking by the teacher however, and failure to provide clarity, practicality, and fairness may result in mass confusion throughout the course of the assignment. In order to avoid such things, incorporating the student’s opinions about what requirements should be met allows them to take responsibility for their work and put them at the center of their learning.
Self-assessment is the third and final form of assessment outlined in the chapter. This form of assessment is one that I find to be the most useful as a student. In my own experience, teacher’s that encouraged self-assessment provided the most growth for me as a student. When one is able to reflect upon their own work, critique it, and defend the decisions they made throughout completion of the assignment, it allows for a fuller understanding of what they learned, what their objective was, and what they can do in the future to improve. It also allows teachers a better understanding of where the student’s perceive themselves to be in terms of mastering the objectives of the course.
Cole Phillips
Rick Wormeli details, in chapter four of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, three major forms of assessment which are all, at least, a bit atypical and can provide for a truly differentiated experience, catering to the individual strengths of each student. Wormeli’s idea of a portfolio-style assessment is one of visual strength and is a collection of works compiled to make as strong a point as any exam. Wormeli speaks on the benefit of this style of assessment as being a creative approach to an assessment that compensates for students who may fully grasp the material, but carelessly err on tests, or students who may not grasp the material at all, but are spectacularly good at guessing on tests. He goes on to comment on the intensive process of rubric making which, in itself, is a form of assessment. While a rubric can, and may well, be too domineering, when prepared carefully and with attention to the wants and needs of all students, it can help to guide students in the direction they need to be headed in order to best grasp the material. Self-assessment, too, can provide students with a more in-depth look at exactly how they did in terms of grasping the material at hand, what they did well, what they could have done better, and how to better prepare for the future. A student’s reflection on his or her self is a powerful one. Realization, rather than being told what to realize, can be exceptionally powerful.
Devin Boilard
Chapter 4: Three Important Types of AssessmentIn Chapter 4 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal author Rick Wormeli breaks the task of assessment up into three vital processes: portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment. Portfolios, Wormeli argues, allow for a broad scale reflection of a student’s accomplishments, detailing the full experience of learning that took place. The flexibility in which a portfolio can be created is vast, each facet carrying its own set of variables: medium (paper vs. electronic), time (multi-year vs. unit), size (a full collection of works vs. representative samples), and purpose (graded vs. reflection). The use of any of these variables is at the teacher’s discretion, allowing for one to easily mold portfolios into their curriculum and have it fit their needs. Second, rubrics, allow for task specific assessment. Rubrics can be constructed to meet two needs: holistic, to view as a whole, or analytic, to view for skills and content. The benefits of analytic rubrics is that they allow students to see what elements of an assignment carry the most worth and can therefore better understand what the purpose of the task is. Holistic rubrics are beneficial in that they are far less time consuming while offering similar levels of feed back verses analytic. It should be noted, rubric making is an art, it takes time and skill and end results will always allow room for improvement.
Lastly, self-reflection, as a student I have felt the process of self-reflection on my own work was an arduous task that carried an outcome of little worth. The practicum experience has changed my views on how I think as a student tremendously, this topic included. As I regard grades with less worth I have been forced to find value in some other element of the learning process, the ability to self reflect and grow from experience has been that outlet. I was inspired by this chapter to create my own process for self-reflection that I would like to someday implement in my classroom. The idea steams around a student driven portfolio project that runs the entire length of a school year, the aforementioned variables at full discretion of the students. The exhibits of these works will take place at parent teacher conferences, creating a great opportunity for student, parent, and teacher to assess learning and establish goals.